Generation Kill

By James PoniewozikSunday, May 18, 2008

Paul Schiraldi / HBO

Stark Sands as Fick and Alexander Skarsgard as Colbert in the HBO miniseries Generation Kill.

Airs July 13 on HBO

The war in Iraq, its critics contend, was not just a human tragedy but a massive waste of resources for diminishing returns. The war has had a similar effect in Hollywood, where the war has produced one nobly-intentioned box-office failure after another (not to mention FX's dud Over There in 2005). Can HBO succeed where the big screen has failed? Maybe, if only because pay-cable audiences have proved willing to pay subscription fees to watch the kind of challenging, socially conscious storytelling  from The Sopranos to Weeds  that the movies have had poorer luck with. And if you're going to do challenging, socially conscious and Iraq, you can't ask for a better producer than David Simon, creator of HBO's The Wire, a cop show that also happened to be a critique of pretty much every major institution in American life. Here Simon turns his critical eye to a seven-part miniseries adaptation of Evan Wright's chronicle of life with the Marines during the 2003 invasion. It could just conquer new ground for TV treatments of ongoing wars.